Wow, can't believe that another year has come and gone.  Now we are a ways into 2018, and yet I have failed to update.  I've had two major deaths in my family and have been dealing with a lot.  I have adventures stemming back to 2011.  So I will be lumping some adventures together as there are some places that I have been back to.  Then this year I will move forward with posting about the adventures as I go on them.  I haven't really gone anywhere, as the weather has been really cold and with other things going on.  I'm hoping to get out soon and explore.  I know that I have missed it and I am so ready to get out there. 

Have a great Tuesday, and keep checking back as I will be updating on where I have been. 

I have been silent for a long time.  I have gone on my adventures since my last post, but yet I have failed to write about them.  My goal is to start writing about these adventures, along with posting pictures of them.  I love to get outdoors and see new things.  It brings me great joy to do that, and I just need to be able to get into gear and share those adventures.

This was pretty fun to go see. My son loved it, especially the stuff that he could touch and not get into trouble by touching it. There were a lot of exhibits that were touchable so it really made it kid friendly in my opinion. There was a lot of work done to make the exhibits really life like. It is well worth the money to go see the museum. They even have some hands on things that kids can do, like a fossil rubbing, the erosion and fossil dig. I know that when my son gets older he will love doing something like this.

The view of the river from the road

This was a spur of the moment day trip. The husband and I were bored, so we loaded up the car buckled our son in and off we went. For the most part it was a fun trip, though driving almost 8 hours with an 11 month old in the back seat can be tiring as he didn't like be constrained like that. We really didn't do anything once we got there, except eat, then we drove back.

The scenery along the way was pretty in some spots and it was just a ton of fun to get out of the house and do something. We had been cooped up all winter and were anxious to go play.

This was one of the best vacations that I have been on. We drove down to Vegas, and stayed at the Stratosphere. When we went to check in, they apologized and said that they ran out of the "economy rooms" and upgraded us to one of their suits for free. That was totally awesome, there wasn't a jacuzzi but it was still great. The next morning we drove to the airport and boarded our flight to San Diego. By the way we had won this trip and everything was paid for except our stay in Vegas, our food and rental car.

As we flew into San Diego, it was very foggy so it was kind of disappointing. After getting off the plane, we boarded a shuttle that took us to the car rental place. The guy was very nice and talkative. He told us short cuts to get to the beach and some places to go see.

After getting our rental car, we immediately headed to the beach. We ended up at Pacific Beach, it was kind of disappointing because it was nothing compared to the beaches in Hawaii. Though it was still fun, the water was cold even though it was at the end of July. We stayed there for a few minutes and then we went to go explore San Diego.

Old Town

This was awesome to experience. My grandma is the one who told me to come visit Old Town, since she used to live in California. The town is set up like an old west town. There were people dressed up in colorful costumes. There were tons of stores you could go into and buy things, though sadly they were very expensive. You could take a tour of the mission, which was very interesting to see. It was a lot of fun to explore old town and see it. I'm glad that we did stop at Old Town and I'm looking forward to going back one day with my son.

After exploring Old Town, we went to our hotel and much to our surprise we were once again upgraded to a suit at no extra charge. This was a ton of fun. We decided to go back to the beach for a while, then we went to bed as we were getting up early to go the zoo and we wanted to beat the traffic.

The next morning we got up early and were getting ready. I happened to look out the window to see how bad the traffic was. Our room had a great view of the freeway. It was seven in the morning and I figured it would have been packed because of rush our, since that is what I was told my parents and grandma. To my surprise it was almost empty. I was in shock and so were they when I showed them the picture.

View of the freeway at seven am on Friday.

San Diego Zoo

The cute little hippo by the front gates

I've always wanted to go to the San Diego Zoo, because I've heard it is amazing to see. It is a huge zoo, so the first thing that we did was go on the bus tour. We were on the top floor of the bus, which was cool because there was no roof above us. We got a whole tour of the zoo in about an hour or so. After the bus tour, we set off on foot to see the zoo.

We actually got to see the Jaguar being fed. They hide his food in the trees and he goes around hunting for it. He is such an incredible animal and gorgeous to. I got to see many amazing animals at the zoo and had a lot of fun doing it. When we were there, they were building a new elephant exhibit. They had posters of it up and it looked really neat.

It took us 8 hours to walk to whole zoo. By the end my legs hurt so bad that I could barely move, but it was so worth it. It was an incredible experience. After we left the zoo we went back to the beach, to spend the evening. It was our four year anniversary and I couldn't think of a better way to spend the evening.

Pacific Beach

We woke up the next morning and got ready to go to Sea World. I have never been there so I was really excited about it. Though I was sad as this was our last day in California and our plane left that evening.

Sea World

A sea lion waiting to be fed

Sea World was an awesome place to visit. I got to see a dolphin and killer whale up close. I was able to pet a sting ray, they felt really weird. I don't know how to describe it, but it was awesome. We also walked through a tunnel that had sharks all around us. Now that was interesting, and I'm glad that they couldn't get to us as I'm not a fan of sharks. The penguin display was pretty cool to. We ate at a restaurant that was shaped like a pirate ship. That was pretty interesting, but it was a long wait to get into the place. The sea lions were pretty noisy and stuff, but it was interesting to see them up close. The sea lion show was pretty fun to see. We also saw the dolphin show and of course the show featuring Shamu. My husband was disappointed since we sat towards the back, he wanted to sit up front and get wet. I unfortunately was a party pooper and didn't want my expensive camera to get wet.

I loved my trip to San Diego and I had a great time. The traffic wasn't bad at all, it was no worse than driving in Salt Lake. I'm excited to go back there one day.

The Old Creamery

Osiris, located approximately 13 miles north of Widtsoe, was founded by E. F. Holt, the financier-developer of Imperial Valley, California, in the late 1920s. Holt built a rock-walled creamery at Osiris, in Black Canyon, which was later converted into a grain processing plant. Holt also built a large summer house overlooking the creamery. The buildings remaining in Osiris are privately owned and should only be view from the dirt road which runs past the old creamery.

The road is paved so you can have access to the Ghost Town in the winter. There is a lot of pretty scenery along the way and makes for a perfect day trip.

One of the dinosaur foot prints.

The best preserved and most numerous of the dinosaur tracks today form the in-place trackway and exhibits of the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm. Many other fossils, including bones of dinosaurs and fish, shells of small aquatic animals, and leaves and seeds of plants, have joined the footprints to enable paleontologists to reconstruct the nearly 200 million year old ecosystem preserved here with unprecedented clarity, an extreme rarity for rocks of any time period. This is a really neat place to go and visit. You get to look at the dinosaur prints up close.

This trip was mostly done for my husband, he loves these kinds of things. It was our first time going to a World Extreme Rockcrawling competition. It was a three day competition, though we could only stay for two days because of living so far away and time off from work. My husband loved it and now wants to build his own to compete in it. We stayed in Vegas at the Stratosphere. It was interesting to watch, as there were a lot of the crawlers tipping over and stuff. The cool part is that no one was getting hurt. Maybe one day I'll compete in one.

The fireplace of the old General Store.

Located high in Mill Canyon on the side of Gold Mountain in the Tushar Mountains is the ghost town of Kimberly. Since it is high up in the mountains the best time to visit is in the late spring to early fall. Kimberly was formerly a Gold Mining town. Originally settled in the 1890s, it lasted until 1910. Kimberly had a minor rebirth in the 1930s, but has been uninhabited since about 1938. The town is perhaps best known as the birthplace of Ivy Baker Priest, a former United States Treasurer. There isn't much left of the ghost town anymore as, the buildings are gone except for the old boarding house and the mill. The scenery is spectacular and the air spells of pine. Though you do need to be careful as there are bears around. The town was divided up into two sections, Upper Kimberly which is mostly where the residents lived, and Lower Kimberly which was where the businesses were. Lower Kimberly's main street bent around the head of the canyon in a horseshoe shape. Kimberly quickly became the leading gold camp in the state, with two hotels, two stores, three saloons, and two newspapers. In 1900 the county formed the Gold Mountain School District, and a log schoolhouse was built. Enrollment peaked at 89 in 1903. Kimberly's school year was just the opposite of the North American norm: children attended school from April through November to avoid the deep snows of winter.

^{By 1902 the Annie Laurie Mine employed 300 miners and Kimberly's population reached 500. The steep canyon road was constantly filled with wagons carrying ore, bullion and supplies to and from the railroad station at in the town of Sevier. The heavy traffic kept the road passable through the winter time.}

Like most mining camps, Kimberly was known as a wild and vice-ridden place. Its brothels were famous, and drunkenness was commonplace. The town had problems with violence, even murder. The two-cell jail was said to be the strongest within 100 miles, which is now located in Pioneer Village at Lagoon.

Arches National Park is located a few miles outside of Moab, Utah. The best time to visit this park is in early spring and early fall, as it gets really hot down there.

There are areas where you can have a picnic and enjoy some amazing views. You can hike up to the delicate arch, but I do recommend that you have tons of water and a camera. It is a long hike about two to three hours.

There is also a broken arch that is interesting to see. There are also tons of lizards hiding and playing on the rocks. Plus there are rabbits around to, though they are still really skittish of people. Whereas the lizards don't seem to be unless you try to pick them up, then they run.

There is also a slot canyon that you can walk into and it opens up into a little clearing of sand. It is a great place to have your kids play and rest for a few minutes.

A view from the petrified sand dunes.


Snow Canyon State Park, is located by St. George Utah. It is only about five dollars to get in and the views in the park are awesome. There are tons of picture opportunities and things to see. There is sand that you can play in, and picnic in. You just have to make sure that you have to take your trash out with you.

There are lots of trails to go hiking on. As you go hiking you will see lava rocks mixed in with the red sand. You can also go hiking down to some of the lava tubs and go in one of them. It is pretty fun to go down in them.

There are also petrified sand dunes that you can hike on. The view is also amazing from the dunes. About two miles outside of the park are two cylinder cone volcanoes. You can distinctly see the shape of them. The two volcanoes are not extinct and erupted last about ten to twenty thousand years ago.

We went to Zion National Park on a day trip to get away. I had been there when I was little but I really didn't remember it. You had to ride a bus to each stop, as you couldn't drive through the park anymore. You could walk to each stop if you wanted. You had to park outside of the park and walk in.

I really liked the Emerald Pools. We only went to the lower pools and they were nice. I think would really look pretty in the spring after all of the snow had melted. At the bottom of the trail you can see a ton of deer if it is toward the evening. We saw about ten deer, and they were not afraid of humans.

We didn't have the opportunity to go hike Angel's Landing, but you could see a lot of people hiking it. There were also a lot of people that were sitting up there, and I've heard that the view is amazing .

The Court of the Patriarchs was really pretty to. The weeping rock was nice to see to. You could go up and touch the rock and it was wet. It is wet all of the time. On our way up there, a squirrel was following us, begging for food. It was cute and the old people behind us finally stopped and fed it.

I recommend that if you are in Utah to stop and see Zion. There are a lot of things to do there. You can hike up the narrows, but make sure you have lots of supplies with you. Also stop in Springdale, and get a bumbleberry pie.

Rainbow Falls

We went to Hawaii for our first anniversary. We boarded our plane in Vegas at 2:45 in the morning aka the red eye express. It was the first time that I have been on an airplane. We were seated by the engines and were lucky enough to have a window seat. It was interesting to sit by the engines, especially when the plane was getting ready to take off. The plane ride was all right, though it was really cold on the plane. The flight was about five hours long. We landed in Honolulu about six a.m. and it was raining when we got there. We had to wait around in the airport for about an hour before boarding our other plane that would take us to the big island. We landed in Hilo about 45 minutes later, and it had stopped raining. The airport at Hilo is outdoors and there were tons of plants and flowers around. We had to wait in line for our rental car for about 30 minutes, but the best part is that they ran out of economy cars and we were upgraded to a convertible for free. It was really awesome, and the couple in front of us were also upgraded and they were so ecstatic. After we put our luggage in the car, the first that thing we did is drive to the beach. I had never seen the ocean before and I was so anxious to see it. The beach that we stopped at had huge rocks as breakers. I stepped into the ocean and was so surprised that it was warm. It was a great experience letting the water hit against my legs, and I even saw a couple of crabs crawling on some rocks nearby. Our hotel was great to we stayed at the Seaside in. There are no doors going to the lobby of the hotel, it is all open. After we got settled into our hotel room, we went back to the ocean to play.

The next morning we got up early and went to Volcano National Park. We ate breakfast in Volcano Village and they have the best Swiss cheese ever, it was so creamy. Afterwards we walked around the whole park. It was so great standing on the crater and looking in. I felt like I was on top of the world. We got to see where the lava goes into the ocean. We didn't hike all the way across the lava, instead we hiked to a lookout point. It was neat watching the smoke rise from the ocean. We also walked through the Thurston Lava Tube. That was a really awesome experience. When you looked at the ceiling you could see the roots of the trees from the top, that was neat to see. You could also see the marks on the wall where the lava had risen to. After spending the day at the park, we drove back to Hilo and decided to go to Rainbow falls. They are beautiful, and if you go in the morning you can see a rainbow over the falls. As we were driving to the falls there were signs saying that you would get fined if you hit these one kind of bird and that bird had the right away to cross the street. I just thought that it was kind of funny.

The next day was our anniversary and we decided to drive to the Kona side of the island and spend the day at the beach. First we decided to stop at Akaka Falls. You had to hike down the them and it was well worth the hike. The falls are huge and surrounded by tons of green foliage. After that we left and ended up at Hapuna Beach, where we spent the rest of the day body surfing and playing in the ocean. My husband lost his sunglasses and I ended up losing my contacts in the ocean and I didn't have my glasses with me. So I had to take pictures of the sunset half blind.

The next day we had to get on the plane and head home. I was so sad to leave the ocean. Hawaii seemed like a magical place to me. Plus on the bright side my allergies didn't bother me. I'm hoping that I will be able to go back soon. I loved it there.